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"Where else can you find this many people who love the same thing you do? This is where I belong..."
-
Sean Tompkins (seanp)

In this variant, players may not discuss strategy with each other and may not make suggestions as to what other players should do on their turns. Players may announce what they are doing on their own turns, but just in a matter of fact way. For example, a player could say, "For my first action, I'm going to Prepare for Travel and take a Ship token." But they may not add anything like, "... and I'm hoping that Steven will move Sister Mary closer to Shanghai on his turn so that Monterey can meet her there."

This will add a lot of difficulty to the game, so you may not want to use this variant unless all of the players are fairly experienced. Players will need to be very observant, trying to deduce what the other players are trying to do so that they can help them or stay out of their way. Coordination will be very difficult unless everyone can get on the same wavelength.

The Lead Investigator must decide on their own at the end of each Mythos phase as to whether they want to keep the Lead Investigator token or pass it to someone else. No input is allowed from the other players.

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The main reason for this variant is to stop the alpha player syndrome. When playing with someone that is much more experienced at the game than anyone else, there can sometimes be a tendency for that person to take over, describing the best course of action for everyone.

I also like the different layer of strategy and deduction that this variant brings to the game. You see a Clue token that you want, but another investigator is closer to it than you are. If you move your investigator closer to the Clue, will the other player notice and understand your intention? Maybe the Active Mystery really only needs one investigator working on it and you think that your investigator is the best person for the job. Can you perform actions in a way that will indicate to the other players that you want to assume the lead on that task?

Also note that I don't mean complete silence. Part of the fun of getting together for a game is socializing. Feel free to talk about the weather, politics, sports, etc., just don't talk about the strategy of the game at all.

For me, Eldritch Horror is pretty unique among coop games in that the path to victory is incredibly vague. And sometimes, even the "best" decision turns out horribly...

Due to that, Eldritch has never really been an "Alpha Gamer" type of game in my experience. Maybe it's just the group I play with, but even the biggest alphas among us never tend to suggest actions with confidence. Every combat or encounter keeps you on your toes. And since a lot investigators benefit from interacting with other investigators, the table usually opens up pretty easy to "Who needs help the most?" suggestions.

That being said, I'd be interested in trying it out, but our win rate isn't quite high enough to warrant the increase in difficulty

This will add a lot of difficulty to the game, so you may not want to use this variant unless all of the players are fairly experienced. [...] The main reason for this variant is to stop the alpha player syndrome. When playing with someone that is much more experienced at the game than anyone else...

This will add a lot of difficulty to the game, so you may not want to use this variant unless all of the players are fairly experienced. [...] The main reason for this variant is to stop the alpha player syndrome. When playing with someone that is much more experienced at the game than anyone else...

Right, this variant comes in handy when most of the players know what they're doing (4+ plays under their belts), but especially when one of those players has played 10 or more times and others haven't. Or just when you have one or two players that tend to alpha.